Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said Wednesday quality control slightly delayed the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
Roque was responding to Manila Mayor Isko Moreno’s remarks that the deployment of vaccines was slow even if Manila is one of the priority areas for vaccination.
According to Moreno, they only received 8,400 doses of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines from the batch that arrived in April. He added the city has yet to receive its allocated vaccines from the two million doses of AstraZeneca and 193,050 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines delivered recently.
“Alam ninyo po iyong pagkaantala ay dahil mayroon po silang pinapa-process na certificate of analysis na kinakailangan. Lalung-lalo na sa Sinovac, magkaroon ng pag-aaral para makita kung parehas ng quality iyong ibang mga dumating sa atin,” Roque said in an interview with state-run PTV-4.
(The delay is due to the processing of certificate of analysis, especially for Sinovac which is subjected to a study to evaluate if the quality is of the same standard compared with other vaccines which arrived here.)
Quality control delays deployment of vaccines: Roque
“So, iyon po ang dahilan kung bakit hindi mai-deliver kaagad. Pero matapos na makuha itong certificate of analysis na ito ay diri-diretso na po iyong pagdi-distribute niyan dahil ang nais nga po natin sa lalong madaling panahon, lalung-lalo na dito sa NCR Plus, ay upang mabakunahan ang pinakamaraming mga kababayan natin,” Roque added.
(So that is the reason why the delivery [to local government units] has been delayed. But after the certificate of analysis is issued, the vaccines will be distributed to the areas in need as soon as possible, especially here in NCR Plus so we can vaccinate our people.)
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III ensured that all of the two million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines would be injected before their expiry date.
According to National COVID-19 Vaccine Operations Center, 1.5 million of the newly-arrived AstraZeneca doses would expire on June 30 and 525,000 doses will perish on July 31.
The DOH chief added that 525,600 of the 2 million AstraZeneca vaccines would be used as the second dose while the remaining would be used as the first dose.
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